Yachats

Easy 1.4 miles round trip 50 feet elevation gain

Left: Surf at Yachats.

Below: The Oregon Coast Trail to Cape Perpetua.

This easy path, part of the Oregon Coast Trail, traces Yachats’ rocky shoreline past spouting horns and crumbling bluffs to a long, broad beach. The trail exists today only because landowners blocked access to the traditional smelt fishing rocks here in the late 1970s. Outraged locals checked county books and discovered a 19th-century right-of-way for an unbuilt county road. A legal battle, fought all the way to the Oregon Supreme Court, ended in 2001. Now the route has been turned over to the State Parks.